Emergency Wartime Bank Notes Worth £1 Million Found in Brighton Shop

A bundle of notes was discovered during renovation work.

A stash of bank notes have been uncovered at Brighton’s Cotswold Outdoor store at Western Road.

The notes date all the way back to World War Two.

Approximately 30 bundles were uncovered, with each around £1000 in value.

They were found by shopfitter Russ Davis during some routine renovation work.

When printed, the notes had a face value of around £30,000. They now, however, equate to over £1 million.

Davis has spoken about the poor state of the notes: “All the notes were stuck together, you couldn’t separate them, and they were caked in dirt. Some of them were really bad where you could see the metal water marks that run through the notes.”

The notes found were all blue, the colour of the emergency wartime currency. This was issued by the Bank of England, starting in 1940.

There has been no word on why the notes were hidden, or who they belonged to.

Davis speculated that they “could have come from a bank robbery, or been stashed during the war by someone who died”.

The notes are currently under the protection of the police, but can be exchanged by the Bank of England.